Become a Google Master

As we all know, effectively using ones time is key to personal and business success. An easy way to save time is to learn some handy Google search tricks. With these, you will have a higher probability of finding what you are looking for the first time and may be able to find information that others were unsuccessful in retrieving. These are excellent skills for all employees to have and quick to learn:

Use basic operators to tell the search engine how to connect or separate words

OR or | - Google will automatically search for all the words you enter so use these to search for either word.

Example: Quick lunch at 97209 | 97210 and Quick lunch at 97209 OR 97210 will provide you with quick lunch recommendations at both zip codes. Please note that OR must be in caps.

“” Quotations - If you just enter a phrase, Google will search for the words as a phrase and individually. However, if you quote it, Google will search for exactly what is in the quotation (great for a particular product that has common words in the title or tracking down a particular presentation).

Example: “a little investment in human connections” is a piece of a VelocX blog post. If you remove the quotations, you’ll get a variety of sites on investing in human capital.

 - Minus Sign - The minus tells Google to exclude a word from the search results.

Example: Portland networking -Maine will not include any Portland networking events or groups in Maine. Note: there is no space after the minus symbol.

* Asterix - The asterisk is a wildcard to represent a missing word. Use it and google will fill in the potential word.

Example: “never * bridges” will bring up examples of statements that start with never and end with bridges, the most common being “never burn bridges.”

.. Double Dot - If you put a double dot between two numbers, Google will search within that timeframe.

Example: Portland Flood 2006…2011 will only provide information on floods in Portland from 2006 to 2011. Note: there are no spaces.

 

Dig deeper once you have a direction

Have Google do a search for more specific content. Google will exclude vast parts of information and dig deeper if you tell it where to look or what to look for. Here are the operators you will need to know for that purpose:

site: - Searches a specific site only. Nice if the site doesn’t have an in-site search.

Example: site:velocx.com social media will search the velocx.com for anything with the words social media. 

inurl: or intext: - Will search for words in a url or in a webpage text respectively. This is nice if you only remember part of an obscure url or need to find something particular in text. If you add “all” in front of it, all the terms have to appear in the search results.

Example: inurl:velocx janet will first find items with velocx and janet in the url and then look for the terms separately. allinurl:velocx janet will only show urls that have velocx and janet in the url.

related: - Anytime you want a site that is similar to the site you are look for (similar competitors, products, information, etc), this is an excellent trick:

Example: related:http://www.5hourenergy.com/ will list all the sites similar to 5 hour energy, which is mostly the competitor products.

Learning and using these 9 operators is a great way to impress clients and staff along with saving yourself precious time.